The politics of care-taking

The first consensus interim setup must deliver only its mandate

May 11 has been announced as the date of the next General Election. With 52 days to go, there is no sign of a caretaker prime minister popping out as an eight-member parliamentary committee went into a huddle on Wednesday.

The deadlock is on two questions: who becomes caretaker prime minister? And, when does the Punjab Assembly dissolve?

The earlier the answers are provided the better – but surely the answers should have been provided at least three weeks ago.

But as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) Chaudhry Nisar Ali and the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Qamar Zaman Kaira have traded diplomatic blows at the centre stage, the more substantive questions about the caretaker setup have yet to come to the front.

The names under consideration are: Hafeez Sheikh, Ishrat Hussain and Justice (retd) Mir Hazar Khan Khoso from the PPP; and Justice (retd) Nasir Aslam Zahid, Justice (retd) Shakirullah Jan and nationalist leader Rasool Bux Palijo from the PML-N. Mentioned amongst possible wildcards have been: Asma Jehangir and Senators Raza Rabbani and Ishaq Dar. And then there is the self-nomination put forward by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q).

There is surely something to be said about each of those nominated. But let us stick to painting in broad strokes. Two of the nominations (Hafeez Sheikh and Ishrat Hussain) are ex-World Bank technocrats – and for a while it appeared that the bets were on Ishrat Hussain taking the coveted post. Ishrat, a former State Bank governor, was both lobbying and being lobbied and still appears as one of the “less-polarising” options on the table.

But installing a caretaker prime minister of the technocrat mould shall be nothing if not a bad joke by politicians on themselves. As a key part of creating what is now widely understood as the fudged economic bubble in the Musharraf dictatorship – and pushing the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) and World Bank’s agenda of pursuing neoliberal economic policies in Pakistan – Hussain was hand in glove with Hafeez Sheikh in creating the grounds for the weak economic foundations the current PPP-led government inherited.

The irony is that it is the PPP that has nominated both Hussain and Sheikh, at a time when the chattering classes and business interests appear to be clamouring from a longer technocratic rule to apparently “remedy the economy”. It is the PPP that has suffered from the economic effects of so-called technocratic fudging with the economy: an agreement with the IMF was signed before Benazir Bhutto’s first term in 1988, another agreement with the IMF was signed by the caretaker PM in 1992 before Benazir’s second term; and it inherited the Shaukat – alias shortkut – Aziz economic mess when it took the reins in 2008.

Technocrats are failures because they pursue IFI-driven agendas and have an exit plan for themselves before they come in. Neither Ishrat Hussain nor Hafeez Sheikh bode well for the confidence of politicians in themselves if either is chosen. Policies are a task for public vote – the tendency to reduce it to the domain of experts needs to be challenged – but this is a subject for a separate article. For now, it must be remembered that caretaker governments do not possess ‘magic pills’. Their task is merely to facilitate a handover. With an over $1.5 billion loan repayment to the IMF scheduled during the caretaker period and the IMF signaling it wants more talks, the choice of a technocrat as prime minister would only serve to indicate that politicians are abdicating responsibility from themselves and looking to play another blame game.

And then there is something to be said about the fact that retired judges are considered the ‘safe choice’ to head interim setups. Two former judges have already been appointed caretaker chief ministers in two provinces to reach a consensus: Justice (retd) Tariq Parvez in the Khyber Pakthunkhwa and Justice (retd) Zahid Qurban Alvi in Sindh. It seems to have shocked no one – except for Asma Jehangir – that former judges are being considered ‘politically neutral’, efficient administrators. Again politicians appear to have more trust in outside institutions than amongst themselves – one of the critical reasons why the discourse of corruption appears to still be solely focused on politicians – and not the civil and military establishment which has shared power for much longer. The question to be asked is that why task judges, whose task was to interpret law, with creating an even playing field for politics?

The names of two Senators Ishaq Dar and Raza Rabbani, both respected in their own way, have more forte for the post – but either is expected to raise alarm to all other political parties. It is similar with the nomination of Rasul Bux Palejo, who is still respected, but his son continues to play an increasingly active role in Sindh’s politics. Asma Jehangir, a candidate with both strong merits and demerits, has withdrawn herself from the reckoning.

Strange happenings continue to be reported: on the eve of the announcement of the caretaker chief minister for Sindh, a key government official was meeting a British diplomat to ‘discuss the caretaker setup’. Ministers of the Balochistan government resigned to join the opposition a day before dissolution of the assembly and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) became part of the opposition in Sindh a month earlier. Political checkers continues to be played, but as with anyone who has played the game knows that checkers is a game that requires much sacrifice. Here it appears politicians are ceding roles they should have taken up themselves to technocrats and judges of questionable merit. The consequences of doing so shall come to the fore soon enough.

But there is another debate to be had about the caretaker setup. If the task is create an even and fair playing field for all political parties, then the Election Commission of Pakistan has yet to fulfill what it has been tasked with. The Supreme Court’s judgment on a petition by the former Workers Party Pakistan has yet to be implemented. Issued on June 12, 2012, the ECP has had enough time to suggest relevant changes in election procedure; including compulsory voting, adding a ‘none of the above’ vote, implementing stricter campaign budgets, but the judgment has yet to come into force. Would an unimplemented SC judgment not raise questions about the credibility of the elections and leave them open to contestation post-event?

Somehow a task as serious as implementing a caretaker setup and an even playing ground for free-and-fair elections have been reduced to a rat race. Essential aspects are delayed as Pakistan attempts to select its first consensus caretaker government. To be fair to them, the existing political parties have not had to deal with such a situation before. There are serious electoral parties, including the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Jamaat-i-Islami, sitting outside parliament, and wildcard groups such as Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek, looking to pounce at any misstep.

Each day’s delay in announcing respective caretaker setups creates more fears. It is imperative that a political solution is found at the earliest to this political problem. Technocratic selections, most certainly, will represent a bad omen, rather than a good one, as people are gearing up to vote within their respective constituencies.

The writer is the general secretary (Lahore) of the Awami Workers Party. He is a journalist and a researcher. Contact: [email protected]